A material in the film form such as a plastic film or coated paper has its surface matted by adding a matting agent thereto for the purpose of preventing its blocking that possibly occurs when wound up in the roll form or improving the close vacuum adhesion property and slidability of it when its entire surface plane is brought into contact with other material. The addition of a matting agent is carried out by coating a hydrophilic colloid layer containing the agent on a support.
Known as the above matting agent are the silica described in Swiss Patent No. 330,158; the glass powder described in French Patent No. 1,296,995; the inorganic particles such as of carbonates of alkaline earth metals, cadmium and zinc described in British Patent No. 1,173,181; the starch derivatives described in Belgian Patent No. 625,451 and British Patent No. 981,198: the polyvinyl alcohol described in JP E.P. No. 3643/1969: the polystyrene or polymethyl methacrylate described in Swiss Patent No. 330,158; the polyacrylonitrile described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,079,257; and the organic particles such as of polycarbonate described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,022,169.
Where such matting agent particles are suspended in a hydrophilic colloid layer, the matting agent is liable to sink in the hydrophilic colloid layer during the coating/drying process, so that it is difficult to obtain a sufficient mattedness. If a large amount of a matting agent or a large particle-size-having matting agent is used in order to increase the mattedness, there possibly occurs deterioration of haze or trouble by foreign matter. Especially in a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material (hereinafter merely called light-sensitive material) having a plurality of hydrophilic colloid layers, some of matting agent particles come out of the surface layer and reach the image-forming layer to thereby cause pinhole trouble. If, to avoid this phenomenon, the amount of gelatin as the hydrophilic colloid is reduced, the pinhole trouble becomes more conspicuous, which is a drawback to the improvement of the hygroscopic expansion characteristic of the hydrophilic colloid layer.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,920,004 discloses that matting agent particles whose surface is grafted with gelatin less sink to the lower layer and not exfoliate even after being processed. However, a light-sensitive material in which such the matting agent particles are used has the disadvantage that it shows a conspicuous blocking trouble when wound up in the roll form.